Egypt police get 10 years for 2010 beating death

Published 6:01 pm, Monday, March 3, 2014

Police officers Mahmoud Salah (left) and Awad Suleiman beat Khaled Said to death in 2010.

Police officers Mahmoud Salah (left) and Awad Suleiman beat Khaled Said to death in 2010.

Photo: Stringer, Reuters

Egypt police get 10 years for 2010 beating death

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

CAIRO -- - A court sentenced two policemen on Monday to 10 years in prison for the 2010 brutal beating death of a young Egyptian that became a rallying cry for the protesters who overthrew longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Rights groups however said the years-long wait before anyone was held accountable for the killing of 28-year-old small-business man Khaled Said in the port city of Alexandria highlights that the wider problem of police abuse, a major grievance of the 2011 protesters, remains unresolved.

Photographs of the dead Said's face, disfigured by what appeared to be a brutal beating, were posted on the Internet and became a rallying cry against torture and other police brutality under Mubarak. Activists used a Facebook page set up in Said's memory to call for the protests that ultimately forced Mubarak from power in February 2011.

Authorities long denied that Said was killed, with successive forensic reports and official statements claiming he had choked on a packet of drugs he swallowed to hide it from the approaching policemen.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

The two low-ranking policemen - Awad Suleiman and Mahmoud Salah - had previously been convicted and handed sentences of seven years, but that conviction was later overturned and a new trial was ordered.

Said's sister Zahraa said her brother was finally vindicated after the Alexandria court confirmed he died under torture and not from suffocation from swallowing drugs. She said she would sue officials who accused her brother of being a drug addict.

"They had defamed his image," she told the Associated Press. "This is the beginning. We still have to get moral retribution. Then I can tell him to rest in peace."